convert wmv to m4a, mp3, etc

This one is so satisfyingly easy I have to jot it down. To quickly and simply convert wmv video get EasyWMA. Ten bucks, it’s worth it, just get it.

I’m reading a book, Efficiency in Learning by Clark, Nguyen and Sweller (highly recommend it) that comes with a CD. Among other goodies, the CD has video interviews with one of the authors, John Sweller. Since I don’t read books at my desk and would prefer to just listen to the interviews on my ipod anyway, I went looking for a converter. (The video files are wmv format.)

I tried Handbrake, but it didn’t want to recognize the wmv files and the latest version is for non-ludites who’ve updated their mac to leopard. Alas.

Fortunately I came upon a forum post recommending EasyWMA. The demo version lets you try it out, but will only give you 15 seconds at 128 bits. The demo is very convincing: conversion is fast and as simple as dropping the wmv file onto the app. EasyWMA is busy converting 37 files as I type. It will be done before I am. Yup, there they are. Lovely.

Off to add them into my iTunes library and I’m all set for the train ride tomorrow. Happy Ending.

extracting audio out of an mp4 movie

This is the next step from the previous exercise, where we converted a dvd into ipod movie format, chapters and all. Great for the other part of we that has a video ipod. Those of us with “only” a nano that doesn’t play video need an audio-only file. So the next step is to get the audio part out of that. (Handbrake unfortunately doesn’t offer an audio only option, at least not that I can tell.)

So we could go back to the dvd probably, but for now I wanted to try to get the audio out of our freshly baked mp4 file. It’s not too difficult after all, and many tools exist out there. A quick test with ffmpegX worked fine, pulling out the audio into several formats (mp4, aac, ac3), taking only minutes each time. (I fumbled with the different formats looking for one that included chapter marking.)

Problem is, those didn’t seem to bring in the chapter marking. Picky picky picky. But chapters would make listening to individual lessons on the dvd much, much easier: there are parts that really are not necessary to hear repeatedly, so skipping around to specific chapters would be nice.

So we got audio. One big hour and a half chunk of it. Next challenge will be to pull out just the audio but this time with chapters. It might be necessary to go back to the dvd for that one… stay tuned. So to speak.

what do david viner, anina, housework and a workout have in common?

I love my new nano and I love listening to podcasts. And I love making connections. For me, that’s what learning really means: making connections in my noggin.

So what do David Viner and Anina have in common? For one, they were both guests on Nerd TV, 2 episodes that I listened to as podcasts. Nerd TV podcasts are long (about an hour), so I wasn’t about to listen to all of them – I’d picked out only a couple that looked kind of interesting. The Anina episode just got downloaded automatically, thank goodness, otherwise I might have missed out on it.

From David Viner you hear about programming from an aging programmer (he’s way over 30), who also sounds like a pretty nice guy in general. He really emphasized the importance of users and programmers “partying together”, and how he learned about actually using something he’d programmed (no?!). As someone who looks at herself as both a programmer and a user, and a programmer that tries to know her user, this is a message I like hearing put out there.

Then I got to hear from Anina, which was a real eye opener (ear opener?). Anina is today’s super user. She manages her business, her contacts, her email, her SMSs, her photography, her web page, her everything-connected-to-everything with ONE device: her mobile phone. Her mobility and connectedness represent a lifestyle that couldn’t be more different from the boring, sedentary life that I live. Yet I’m supposed to write learning content for people her age (around 23). Ha!

Anina’s life just happens a lot faster than mine. Most twenty-somethings today really are tuned in to the MTV wicked fast, multi-processing way of operating that is foreign, or even off-putting, to those of us dinausaurs who had long lost their virginity by the time Anina was born.

If Anina had to sit in a college classroom she would be bored to tears. Unless of course, she could sit in the back and write some code for her mobile so she could update her blog, arrange her next meeting and get her laundry done at the same time. Yet this is the user, the student, that our elearning content is supposed to engage. It’s a whole different world, and we’d better pay attention to it.

One more connection. The other day I was listening to a discussion about learning and memory at a “scientific café“. One of the people sitting on the panel took out a pair of glasses with a wearable computer that allows you to be connected to the internet at all times: whenever you want to contact your network of friends or connect to information in the internet, you can. With one small device attached to a pair of glasses. She got some oohs and ahs, but also a fair amount of OMG-what’s-the-world-coming-to gasps from the crowd of mostly teacher types.

That older crowd (over 30 to well over 30) didn’t realize that this is already the case for the age bracket we’re teaching. Ask Anina. She already has the all-in-one, always connected device: her mobile phone. Maybe we couldn’t imagine, as David Viner suggests, that we could literally party with Anina, or university students her age; but we should be paying attention to what makes them tick, and the incredible speed at which they’re ticking.

So what about the connection to housework and workout? Well, of course, that’s when I listen to my nano.

- Noah

this won’t hurt a bit

Speaking of loading, here’s my nano iguy getting his podcassed…

Such a happy little fellow.